Earlier this year, I was able to escape the clutches of a handful of kids and toddlers and make my way west to the great city of St. Louis, Missouri. It was my first time visiting the area and the family at Purina Beneful welcomed me and a few other bloggers with open arms to inaugurate the #FriendsofBeneful campaign.
I was able to meet with them for several days and recant moments of my childhood stomping around the country with my dog, Cara. I was also able to talk about the needs of Cooper, the Boston Terrier that my wife and I had adopted together while dating almost ten years ago. As it happens, my parents were a Purina Dog Chow family (the big 25-pound green bag with the checkers) back in the 1980’s and currently, my wife and I have consistently and loyally used the Beneful brand.
Not only did I get to understand the sense of family behind the brand that’s been around since William H. Danforth started it as a farm feed business in 1894, but got to meet Amanda, their in-house culinary wizard, meet their quality assurance team and spent the majority of a week day rebuilding a local Soulard Frenchtown dog park for the Beneful Dream Dog project.
As I planted the final shrub on the exterior fence of the park, I thought about the magnitude of work that me and my friends had accomplished so that other owners and their dogs would enjoy it for months and hopefully years to come.
It made me sad that I wasn’t able to take Cooper along with me on the trip. Beneful had wanted me to, but as our terrier continues to get older, his cataracts and incontinence has become worse, as has his nervousness.
Like every year, through the months of November and December, it’s been that time again for us to continuously live out of suitcases, traveling up and down the east coast visiting family… with Cooper happily trotting alongside, excited to take position on the tops of our relatives sofas for the duration.
With each Christmas, the little guy finds himself with a new treat. We long abandoned the rawhide bone, as he was choking up slobbery pieces and leaving them in the most romantic of places (i.e. my bedroom pillow, in my shoes) around the house. We also left behind the toys containing internal squeakers, as he would chew relentlessly, stripping the object of it’s fuzz and noisemaker, eventually leaving a pile of rubber shrapnel behind.
These days, we’ve gone a simpler route with the Beneful Baked Delights AND I always grab a few bags of the Dental Twists because HYGIENE, people.
And like clockwork on New Year’s Eve, as Ryan Seacreast nears the midnight hour in Times Square, he’s always expecting a few leftovers from dad’s annual surf ‘n turf treat to himself – a personal tradition that I watched my dad do with our golden lab, Cara, may she rest in peace.
In honor of my old friend and in the spirit of the holidays, Beneful and I would love to send a lucky someone a little surprise for their pet – a toy, ornament, stocking for your dog and Beneful sample – simply enter the raffle below and I’ll pick a winner before the new year!
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was a sponsored trip and post by Beneful, however, the thoughts, story and explanation of my journey are all mine. To learn more about the Beneful brand, check them out here, on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram!
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